How weird was the news out of Florida this year? So weird that the popular @_FloridaMan Twitter account apparently gave up trying to keep up with it all in mid-October. He hasn’t tweeted anything to his 387,000 followers since two weeks before Halloween.

But don’t worry. Florida’s largest newspaper has not slacked off on tracking all the wacky and wild news this year. As expected, 2017 produced a bumper crop of the bizarre.

Some Florida headlines became instant classics: “Man accidentally shoots self in road rage incident,” and “Possum breaks into liquor store, gets skunky drunk” and “Polk City woman arrested for DUI on a horse.”

And who could forget “Lawyer’s pants erupt in flames during Miami arson trial”?

Florida crime, as always, offered a bonanza of bonkers behavior. There was the Pinellas Park man who Googled “how to rob a bank” and then robbed a bank. (Apparently he forgot to Google “how to get away with it.”)

A woman in a bikini contest in Stuart was busted for bashing a competitor in the head with her high-heeled shoe (neither won Miss Congeniality).

A Merritt Island man trashed an ATM because, he said, it gave him too much cash.

When a SWAT team raided a home in the retirement mega-community of The Villages, police found more than just the meth lab they’d expected. They also discovered it was a chop shop for stolen golf carts.

The Floriduh Man! assaults an ATM was a hoot. Apparently he inflicted an estimated $5,000 worth of damage to the cash machine because it gave him more money than he asked to withdraw and he was frustrated because he didn’t know what to do about it.

VIDEO: A Florida man was arrested for causing $5,000 in damage to a Wells Fargo ATM because it gave him "too much money" pic.twitter.com/sxKz1bbh7O

And then there are the distinctions they are not so thrilled about. In 2009, the New York Post labeled it “ground zero for geriatrics who are seriously getting it on.” The story reported that couples had been caught having quickies in the golf carts and noted there was a thriving black market for Viagra. A local police officer told the paper, “You see two 70-year-olds with canes fighting over a woman and you think, ‘Oh, jeez.’ ” As a result, the place that likes to bill itself as “America’s Friendliest Hometown” has seen a huge increase in sexually transmitted diseases.

Speaking of Floriduh Man, Floriduh Woman, and what they do with each other, back to the recap…

A man who was stealing a trailer in Cooper City stopped long enough to have sex with his accomplice. In Sarasota, a tennis match had to be halted because of the noise from a couple’s amorous exploits. In Fort Walton Beach, a woman told police that she attacked her husband only because he threw her sex toys at her.

A woman donned a wig to sneak into a Palm Coast wedding where she spotted her boyfriend kissing someone else, poured a drink on him, punched another woman, fled to the bathroom and was then dragged out by angry bridesmaids and got into a brawl with them. Meanwhile, a Palm Beach Gardens mom threw eggs at her daughter’s boyfriend, then chased him through the yard with her Mercedes because he’d confessed to her daughter that he’d been cheating — with the mom.

The Floriduh Man! assaults an ATM was a hoot. Apparently he inflicted an estimated $5,000 worth of damage to the cash machine because it gave him more money than he asked to withdraw and he was frustrated because he didn’t know what to do about it.

I had a cash machine give me too much money once. It was the ATM at my bank and I went in and gave the excess back to them because I’m honest. They didn’t quite know was to do. They tried to give me some bank trinket as a thank you but I declined their offer.

@Yarrow: I had friends who worked at Disneyland; they referred to it as ‘the insane asylum.” Needless to say it was one of the less desired assignments. Not sure if hazard pay was involved — although life-long counseling should’ve been.

@Mnemosyne: I don’t think I’ve ever been to the park during the holidays. The kid was pretty surprised when I told her I’d never been to California Adventure, the last time I was at Disneyland was the day they started building California Adventure.

California Adventure is pretty fun now. It’s basically Pixar Land, with some Disney and Marvel thrown in. Plus the food is way better than at Disneyland for some reason. They even bake their own Boudin sourdough bread on-site.

@Mnemosyne:
Does CNN even have copy editors anymore? I was never happy with them myself, but I knew they were a necessary part of the publication process. These days it’s bean-counting über alles, and you can’t count on the bean counters to know such things.

You should get on Charles Phoenix’s mailing list for the next time he does one of his Downtown LA as “Disneyland” architecture tours. You can get the local history without actually having to go to Anaheim. I think he’s on his book tour right now, though, so I’m not sure when he’ll do another one.

Most places don’t have copy editors anymore. It turns out to have been a lucky break that I was not able to find a copy editing job out of college, because most of those people ended up working retail after their newspapers or magazines laid them off. And I was able to turn my current secretarial job into an occasional copy editing job, so it worked out eventually.

They keep talking about bringing one of our museum exhibitions to Singapore, but no luck so far. I’m assuming that would be easier for you to get to than Japan if you were so inclined.

@ruemara:
I still think that a lot of humans have no idea what causes pregnancy. They understand how the parts go together but why seems to be beyond quite a number of them. And the population keeps growing so sure there will be more stupid people. Wouldn’t it be nice if the ratio could possibly even out, a few more smart people to make up for those who are humankind challenged?

@🐾BillinGlendaleCA: And here’s the Google Street View of that building, notice that the building has sets of two windows, except in one vertical that has one window per floor. That’s where they removed a portion of the building and moved the western portion of the building eastward. They needed to do this due to street widening on Olive.

Not long after we moved into this “new” house in very rural WV, west of West Tango, it got to -37 one night. When I woke up it seemed cooler than normal in the house, about 60. So I said to myself, well, I’ll make a cuppa tea and investigate. Went to turn a burner on the very nice kitchen range M insisted I have to cook for her with, and nothing happened. No Gas. None! Not even that bad smell, because our gas is well head gas, no dehyhration, no odorizer for safely, nothing….. right outta the ground.

I called a neighbor who worked for Pennzoil who ran the oil patch back then, and they suited up and worked pouring methyl alcohol into the meter and lines, to deal with potential water or condensate in the lines. It was as clear out that day, about 18 inches of slow on the ground, motionless frozen air. Just about dark Mondo came walking up
to ask me to try it again, now. and sure enough, they had it back up and running.

It was 55 in the house by then, and I joyfully lit the stove burners and turned the furnace back on. The house was what many called over-insulated at the time. I called it warm.

But if you had gone out into -37 degree temps with 3 tee shirts and a hoodie, you would have had hypothermia in a very few minutes. At 18 degrees, right now, that’s 55 degrees warmer than a -37 degree morning.

@J R in WV: My sister came for supper on Christmas Eve (just outside Seattle) and was complaining about the cold. We keep the house at 68 during the day which is pretty warm to me, it’s about 30 outside and snowing and she’s cold. I think I’ve adapted a bit because I thought it was pretty mild. Around 10pm we all went outside to make snow angels and throw snowballs at each other. I had on a sweatshirt, my husband was bundled up like Nanook, and my niece’s husband was walking around in his t-shirt, no jacket. My sister had on a heavy coat and heavy gloves. She’s been in town since the 24th and hasn’t gotten warm yet.

My legs and feet got cold after a while and I had to go back inside for a few minutes.

@🐾BillinGlendaleCA: I can understand that. My husband is still cold all of the year, just can’t get warmed up, but if the sun is out and there’s no wind, 50 degrees F is comfortable in a t-shirt if we’re working in the garden. This place is still a puzzle to me. Both of my girls were living here when that one really terrible freeze hit and there were two tour buses hanging over the edge of the I-5 in Seattle; they had slid down an icy road and finally came to rest with their front wheels in the air, like this: https://youtu.be/hblLvfCE72k.

A propos of the topic– there’s a point to be made about the ‘everyone is getting supider’ meme– regression to the mean works both ways. It’s true that children of smart parents tend to be less smart, but it’s also true that children of dumb parents tend to be smarter. Conservation of IQ, sort of.

The day before Christmas Eve, a man was found dead in a burning car in a Walmart parking lot in Devils Lake, North Dakota. The deceased was, three guesses now, … a Florida man. As the temperature was in the low 20s … below, I believe he was just trying to warm up.

decades ago, in dizzyworld on a blisteringly hot and windless day, we kept looping around the park and, when over heated, going into it’s a small world as it was airconditioned, had short lines and the kids loved the ride. the music was a bit annoying but a small price to pay on that particular day.

Years ago, there was a power outage or other malfunction at Disney World while my young daughter and I were on Small World. Lights were still on, and the music kept playing, and the animatronic creatures kept doing what animatronics do. However, the boats were dead in the water. As I recall, we were stuck for more than half an hour. Some passengers got out of the boats and waded out. Being a responsible parent, I stayed in the boat with my daughter. I have always felt that I was smarter before that ride than after.

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